Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives - with Cat Gale

[00:00:00] I've been looking longingly at these skittles for like last hour This withering production All I knew was I wanted to try and understand the way the world works, the natural world We explore because we are human Science is the storytelling of our time

[00:00:31] So me storytelling has always been the way to the sound CUT Hello and welcome to Who Moved the Tortoise, a podcast about science and wildlife filmmaking I'm Alex Hemingway And I'm Kate Doonley And as usual we're joined by someone from the world of science or wildlife telly

[00:00:54] To talk about the film or TV show that inspired them This time we're talking to producer-director Kat Gale Kat worked in HIV research for eight years at UCL completing a PhD and research fellowships before getting the bug for TV

[00:01:10] She began her life at the BBC as a PA but within four years her breakout talent saw her directing her first gig, the BBC Four film The Joy of Logic She's since won awards by dissecting The Joy of Winning and discovering the power of AI in computer-sales show

[00:01:27] She's now returned to her roots making documentaries about vaccines for BBC Two and CNN's The Race for the Vaccine and Soon to Air, BBC and PBS's The Battle to Beat Malaria

[00:01:38] To get where she is today she's had to push birds and goats out of a room in Uganda where she needed to set up a DNA sequencer and push Professor of Risk David Spiegelhalter out of a plane

[00:01:50] Kat's choice for the film or TV show that inspired her is the BBC Four documentary Parallel Worlds Parallel Lives That's my train and I gotta go on to the next fantastic voyage into my father's brain Have you seen my dad's brain around here?

[00:02:11] Your dad's theory is one of the most important discoveries all time in science I'm gonna put it right up there with Einstein's relatively theory, Newton's theory or gravity There really are very large numbers of versions of you that really exist Now you're blowing my mind Good

[00:02:36] So Kat, how easy a decision was it to pick this film? Well, how easy was it? It was actually really easy because you know when you put the question to me a few weeks ago it was the only film that I really thought about. I have to confess

[00:02:57] I did not grow up watching vast amounts of science telly but this one is is quite singular and quite particular in that it just really really stuck in my mind as a not as a science film but just

[00:03:13] as a film that I saw and I just loved. So was that love of science always there from when you were a kid? Was that always just a natural progression for you? Well it wasn't necessarily science it was just a kind of general curiosity about the world

[00:03:29] I went and did my undergraduate degree at Manchester and biology and I guess it's not surprised that I chose biology because it's quite broad you can do anything from the ecology of sand dunes in New York which by the way was a very excellent field trip.

[00:03:47] I'm not going to throw an awful lot of ecology out on that field trip to be honest. To you know the molecular biology of herpes viruses and just it would just be every lecture

[00:04:02] kind of blowing my mind and I loved that but after I finished my PhD and did my first post-doc that I began to see that perhaps a full life lived in the lab was going to potentially not be what I

[00:04:22] wanted in the sense that that dawning realisation that I mean as you get it in most careers but you're going to become you're not going to be doing the science you're going to be managing

[00:04:34] the science and you're not going to be doing the experiments you're going to be writing the grants trying to get the money in and you're going to be supervising the PhD students and you're

[00:04:42] going to conferences and schmoozing and that you know that's all part of that life and so there was that part of it that began to make me wonder oh is this why I want to be doing.

[00:04:52] Let's bring the film in at this point I think because I feel like we are I feel like we're creeping very very close to it in terms of your life story through the wonders of the the BBC

[00:05:01] genome website we can go back and see its entry in the radio times and its first ever broadcast which was Monday the 26th of November 2007 at 9pm on BBC 4. Can you take us back and give us a sense

[00:05:16] of who you were and what you were doing at that point where were you at in your career and who was the cat-gail of that moment? So in 2007 I was doing the sort of second research fellowship

[00:05:30] I had which was a sort of it was a bit of a sidestep from the HIV research. I was actively at that point thinking or you know what do I want to do so what else was I doing then? I mean I was going to

[00:05:43] lots of gigs I think I went back and looked through my iPhoto library to see what was happening then it's incredible it goes about that you know you can just whine back through your life. I went to Bonne-Cassim where the Arctic Monkeys headlined, went to Glastonbury that year

[00:06:04] I was doing a bit of science but like I said this film really did stand out to me but it wasn't a moment when I watched it of thinking oh I want to make this because it didn't even

[00:06:19] occur to me that it could be something that I could do because I didn't know anyone that worked in television, no one that I grew up with, no one that I was kind of working with at the time

[00:06:30] was in the industry and I didn't have any connections so I just didn't even feel like something that would be possible. So I watched the film and I'm pretty sure I watched it when

[00:06:41] it first came out in 2007 and just enjoyed it and just thought it was this wonderful human, funny weird mashup of memoir and science and physics and family and all this stuff that I just love.

[00:07:03] Mark Oliver Everett known to his friends as E is the creative force behind the successful cult rock band Eels but what many of Mark's fans don't know is that his father Hugh Everett was a brilliant quantum mechanic. He developed the groundbreaking theory of parallel universes,

[00:07:20] a scientific theory that has seeped into the worlds of film, music and literature and is part of our everyday vocabulary and it just stayed with me in that way and it really wasn't until you know you came knocking asking about what would be the film

[00:07:36] that I'd choose that I went back and rewatched it and then it's pretty obvious why I'd like it given what I've gone on to do but at the time the penny did not drop. Mark Oliver It also strikes me as

[00:07:48] quite obvious in hindsight from what you've just described that your year 2007 you're enjoying loads of great live music, you're clearly into the music scene in a big way and you love science. I mean this film is a perfect place.

[00:08:02] I mean it totally is, it's such a glorious guilty pleasure if you're inclined in those ways as I am. You know a film that starts with you know someone on stage and the music and the you know

[00:08:14] the texture of that archive and Annie Mack doing the voiceover which is really you know not what you'd expect everything about it just sucks you in from the beginning. Perhaps what you didn't know at that time but which is obvious to you now from the way you make

[00:08:31] films is it's human stories. While you've made a lot of science films it's actually the human story that you focus on a lot while getting the science right it's the human story that drives you.

[00:08:43] I think the thing about the film you know it's a personal journey and we all talk about different formats and it's often can be quite reductive but in that sense it's almost like

[00:08:55] the quantum physics falls sideways out of it. It just sort of tumbles out of the process in this pretty effortless way. I only have a very very vague understanding of my father's theory.

[00:09:09] It gets up to a certain point and it becomes like impenetrable then it gets into the scientist language where she's like it's like a different alphabet in ancient practically.

[00:09:20] I think what I love about it is there's no sense at all and this is something that I've really tried to do in the things that I make of like here's a bit of human stuff and now here's the science bit

[00:09:33] you know it just it just sort of flows naturally you know Mark's going to go and meet Mark's tag mark which is just a wonderful scene. It just he looks like he's in love with him

[00:09:45] and just I had all of it but whatever it is just the explanations of the double slit experiment or parallel worlds what that idea is it just emerges very naturally and it's also brought to life

[00:10:00] and again like watching this in hindsight it's a real like duh moment like wedded or by ideas come from a little actually that original like all the graphics are just really sort of simple and hand drawn and they're not like the stereotypical blue light kind of science thing

[00:10:17] which I can't bear so it's just everything about it is geared to just make my brain go ping and I've subconsciously in the many films I've made now worked those features into them

[00:10:33] just quite naturally and I think yeah just coming back to the it's a people not the science science is done by people and people are fascinating and flawed and interesting I've been asking myself

[00:10:47] like is that what they do and that's what I spy to have it but you know I look back at the first film that I made the Jorah Plotik and each bit of the story each bit of the you know the progression

[00:10:59] in this story it's a very different kind of film but about logic is driven by a person and the context that they live in and why they were doing what they did and then hopefully what

[00:11:11] bull's calculus is or whatever it is just emerges without you having to think about it too hard and it's not it's not to underestimate the potential of viewers to understand and comprehend

[00:11:22] it's not to patronize people to make to tell these stories this way it just to me feels like a really natural way to do it you know my father just died but I you know I barely

[00:11:33] knew him so it was hard to know how to feel like a normal person would feel in that situation so I guess it's pretty sad that I had you know the one really intimate experience I had with

[00:11:46] him was while he was dead you know that it's integral the story for him finding out about his father is the same integral journey as him finding out and understanding his work because

[00:12:02] for his father he the work and the man were intertwined they you couldn't take them apart from one another and they inform his choices and who he was and therefore who he was in Mark or E's life

[00:12:17] yeah um so it's so easily intertwined in this film it just naturally as you say creates that that interplay but yeah I think it makes it easier in but at the same time if you think about it

[00:12:31] begin to think about it it sort of boggles your brain a bit because it makes it really matter too but again that's just I think that's glorious because it's one of those things that you can

[00:12:41] just sit and have it wash over you and and really enjoy ease charisma and smokiness of gars and just the coolness of that and the delicious awkwardness of the meetings with his dads or colleagues and just these old nerdy dudes that are just it's like total worlds collide

[00:13:03] which is always a wonderful thing to do but they're colliding with sort of such love and good intention it's not hard to watch it's just a lightly awkward to watch and then yeah the

[00:13:15] the actual specialist actual content if you will then just comes from those moments and those encounters it's a real honor to get to meet you because your dad has just been such an inspiration

[00:13:27] to me oh and I was a grad student in Berkeley I found in this old bookstore a copy of this 137 page paper that your dad wrote and it was like wow it's totally all made sense and since then

[00:13:42] I've spent many years working on your dad's theory and various implications of it and and it's just so cool for me to actually get to meet you here it really feels like and you can tell

[00:13:54] me because I know you've spoken to people that made this and I'm dying to get a bit inside intel just about the process I think often if you're making that kind of film if you know someone

[00:14:04] is going on a journey or they're going to meet people who are working with a presenter or or someone who's not necessarily a presenter but fronting your program often in those you might direct someone to go into a meeting or an encounter with an aspiration of what you

[00:14:19] want to get out of it and it does feel like with those encounters in the film that there was almost no expectation there's no script feels very loose it feels very free it feels very they could have

[00:14:33] sat around that table and just said anything and to me those the conversations and the interactions feel very real so whether they're about him trying to understand the double C experiment or

[00:14:46] you know talking to Max Teckmark at the blackboard or whether it's when he sat outside at the picnic table with all all colleagues and they suddenly start talking about his family's history of mental

[00:15:00] health and then it feels like it could go in any way but I really like that so I've spoken with the exec Andrew Thompson the producer director Louise Lockwood and I had an

[00:15:15] email chat with David Briggs who was the AP so I kind of managed to amazingly connect with them all thanks to Val Mellon who's a brilliant SP up in Glasgow and this was made out of BBC Scotland

[00:15:28] so I think there's three reasons why that happened one is Louise Lockwood is from an arts background arts films are much more loose and so this was the the first science film she did

[00:15:42] so it was a shock for her that she had to script everything out she did not understand any of the science and so to Andrew the exec's credit he got in an AP David who got the science like he

[00:15:56] knew it so you have this great balance of someone who doesn't understand it and therefore can make sure that the science is understandable when it goes out and is then can follow that journey

[00:16:09] these journey really easily in a way because she's trying to understand it at the same time so I think that's what made it feel loose is because she's from an arts background but she

[00:16:18] had to script out the all the science so she had to know when to add these stepping stones in of right now we need to know this and now he needs to meet this person who's

[00:16:28] going to explain this bit of science to him so I think that's credit to having this brilliant director who had to learn how to parcel out science that we know we've learned to do making

[00:16:41] science films already I think point two is that she got to have a recce and so she had a lot of time with Mark she got to meet all the different contributors so the the woman who was talking

[00:16:51] about his sister and the family she was just having a matter with her in the kitchen when she was supposed to be having kind of the recce and meeting the husband and seeing

[00:17:01] what he would say and she's like we have to have her in the film so having a recce really helped we don't always get recce these days but that really helped her for people who are listening who

[00:17:09] maybe don't work in tv a recce is a very valuable thing and they are ever rarer we don't get them very often anymore but they're hugely valuable it adds a little bit

[00:17:20] of money which we all have a little bit less of these days sadly and the third thing was himself all three of those people told me how he was so up for the journey and he like

[00:17:31] had hit his 40s he wanted to go back and look at all this stuff that's really difficult I mean he had a really traumatic childhood and then upbringing you know what happened to his family

[00:17:41] and so he wanted to look back and try and kind of get all this stuff sorted in his head that he dealt with a lot in his songs so at least he had some kind of output to deal with all

[00:17:53] the things that had happened to him you know his father dying and him not really knowing him at all not having any physical contact with him until after he died his sister sadly killing herself

[00:18:04] his mother dying too all actually happening in quite a short space of time so yeah he really wanted to go on this journey and was really happy to take two weeks off of his busy

[00:18:15] hectic rockstar career and do this you know and try and understand everything and so I think those three things together yeah it's like I mean it's a glorious combination really and you know like

[00:18:29] you say we you know in the time that I've worked in television which is or I don't know 14 14 years 15 years now I mean it's extraordinary how that's changed in terms of the amount of time and money

[00:18:43] and time that you have but I think it's just such a universal truth that the the things that often seem the most effortless and easy to watch as a viewer you know what's have to

[00:18:59] go on behind the scenes to get to that place of those scenes playing out in that way is all of that time you know talking getting to know wrecking establishing relationships forming connections bonding as a team you know particularly if you're shooting something in a much more kind

[00:19:17] of self-shot home-spun way when there's more on a really small number of people and there was so on this it was a really small team so it was a Louise was self-shooting and this was right the

[00:19:28] start of when TV started using self-shooters so she's self-shot and there was an AP and a sound man and that was it with a kind of going on this almost music tour of their own around the

[00:19:40] country and that made it really intimate and I think that worked really well for E and his kind of personality and how he would do things and so it worked really well. Louise the director comes from

[00:19:53] you know an arts background so there's some like science films and it's like well what was a science film anyway like it can be it can and it should be able to be anything but it's more

[00:20:07] rare today to have the space to do that and obviously this was a film that was on BBC 4 that's where a lot of the early films that I made that's the space that he played out and it really was a

[00:20:17] channel and a commissioning team that kind of just let you loose and I think you know this has been talked about in the podcast before but it's a real gift to be able to do that because you

[00:20:28] then you can just be completely unconstrained if films like this don't get made then it's just a huge loss because there's a whole load of people that are just going to miss out. Me saying that film must have subconsciously been usually significant and more significant than

[00:20:50] I probably realised in the transition that I made from science into TV. I just wanted to pick up on something that you mentioned a bit earlier which was your experiences making stuff for BBC 4. Most of my early directing experiences were at BBC Scotland in that same department

[00:21:08] making stuff for BBC 4 and I still think of those as the most creative and the most creatively free filmmaking experiences I've ever had and I just wondered what was it about that place and that

[00:21:21] department and about BBC 4 more generally is a channel that allowed that? Well I think you know the remit of BBC 4, the original vision for it like I've made lots and lots of films for a

[00:21:33] company called Wings Band Productions and they've got on their old office which I don't know how anymore but there was a framed hanky that Tracey Emman had written something on. I think it was

[00:21:45] from the BBC 4 launch event and so I think it's something that everyone got but it says everyone needs a space to think and I think the people who were there at the inception of BBC

[00:21:57] 4 will be able to tell you what the original vision was but it very much felt like the people commissioning the films had a real free reign to go wherever they wanted to and it wasn't tied to

[00:22:15] the kind of commissioner briefings that you get now which is we're looking for X, Y and Z so you know big presenter led. I just think with Martin Zavinson very early on and with Cassian

[00:22:27] there was just a trust that what you were saying you wanted to make and the way you wanted to make it was going to work for the BBC 4 audience and who knows maybe they just weren't bothered about

[00:22:38] so bothered about being figures oh I seem to remember at the time they were you still had that whole oh I'm here overnight yet kind of thing even though it was BBC 4 you know there

[00:22:47] was still attention on that but yeah it does it does feel like a very specific place and time but do you know I don't want to be too sort of nostalgic about it and feel like

[00:23:01] that's the only way you can have those freedoms because I think it is possible to be creative and have that sort of vibe in the way that you're working if you fight for it if you have to I have

[00:23:19] to sort of believe that it's possible to keep making things and have the experience of making those kind of films on other channels in other spaces sort of being true to your instincts

[00:23:32] when it comes to what's going to make this film that they want the best version of it that I can make and the experience of making it the most fulfilling experience for me and for my team and everyone around it and then for the people watching it.

[00:23:50] I do share your optimism but I can't help lamenting the loss of BBC 4 as a commissioning force because it was unique and I think it perfectly sort of encapsulated what the BBC is supposed

[00:24:04] to be about. I think it's definitely hard just because there are fewer opportunities and we all know about the total terrible state that you know the industry is in right now for lots of reasons

[00:24:16] but I think the fact that BBC 4 doesn't exist is obviously part of it you know the slashing of commissions people becoming more risk averse that's all part of that story but I think we can't hold those things solely responsible for people particularly you know the less obvious

[00:24:39] hires or people new in the industry for not getting the opportunities that is the responsibility of people like us to hire those people because you know if we're getting an opportunity to make

[00:24:53] a program then we should be trying to find the researchers or the ap's who really need those opportunities and make it it should be part of our remit if it's getting harder and harder for

[00:25:08] those people to get the opportunities then we just have to be kind of try harder to give them the opportunities and not just in the hiring but in the way that we work together in the way

[00:25:18] that we put teams together in the opportunities that people get in those teams and if the budget and the schedule make that difficult like trying to figure out a way that you can work around that

[00:25:32] like we have to we just have to yeah we have to we owe it to the people who've done it for us and the people who are coming next I mean I think what's interesting is because

[00:25:45] you're a working mum and you know sometimes if you're working part-time or if you've got child care issues or whatever that also makes it hard for people to give you a job and I find this as well

[00:25:57] but you have really pushed down barriers in that area as well which I think is fabulous and I want to talk about because again it's a visibility thing so I sort of sat at home

[00:26:04] with two small children thinking huh how does this work now what's next in that way that we all have you know when you finish a project and you're like okay what could come next and

[00:26:18] an opportunity to develop of making this film about malaria vaccines so the COVID vaccine film that I'd made during COVID and we'd established this great relationship with Oxford University and all through COVID they were also developing malaria vaccines and we always all said at the

[00:26:35] time someone should be making a film about this but obviously we've got a slightly bigger fish to fry in making film about the COVID vaccines but you know arguably malaria kills far more

[00:26:46] people and children every year has done for a long time and continues to do so so I got a call when Eddie was a few weeks old just saying they're in phase three trials and children are being vaccinated and they're anticipating getting an efficacy result for this vaccine

[00:27:04] relatively soon so if we're going to do this we should do it sooner rather than later what do you reckon and so I probably in a slightly sleep deprived hair brained postpartum state said

[00:27:17] oh yeah I'm sure I'll figure it out um so just started doing bits and pieces you know going to Oxford filming little bits and bobs trying to pick up parts of the story and what I did was

[00:27:32] because Eddie was still so tiny I took him with me and the people at Oxford were great the press guy there was just he loved him he's one of those guys that loves babies and was quite

[00:27:43] happy to have this little tiny cute thing around and I took my mum and so my mum would just look after Eddie while we were filming and then we'd have breaks and I feed him and then it was quite

[00:27:53] it's quite I mean also the nature of what we were filming because it was observational it was on we were totally in control of the timing of things so it was totally practical reasonable and then it sort of transpired that as part of the characters the scientists

[00:28:08] we're going to have to go to Seattle to present some of this their preliminary findings at a big conference and like well we have to go film that and so we had a zoom conversation and

[00:28:21] the place where it started was well how are we going to do this and I said well I'll just do what I've been doing so far and I'll take Eddie and there was a sort of tumbleweed kind of silence

[00:28:34] and then the exec who I was working with who I adore and is brilliant and I've worked with all throughout my career said the words that I didn't want to hear which was well the

[00:28:47] childcare that's your problem right and it's like well it's my problem if you make it my problem I'm making it my problem and I think it was just a it was it didn't come from a place of

[00:29:00] malice at all it was just like oh we don't know how to do this and the reason nobody knows how to do this is because women who have small babies don't make television programs and the reason

[00:29:11] they don't make television programs because no one's worked out how to do this is a paradox which and I'm nothing if not dogged when presented with one of those and what I

[00:29:21] wanted to do was go because I had all of the relationships with the contributors and it was going to be a sort of a self-shooting setup with me and my producer so it was really you know sort of

[00:29:33] an access driven thing we knew the story inside out was also going to be a really brilliant sort of range finding that actually seeing what was going to happen and what were the dynamics

[00:29:43] and how were people going to respond to this and what's the politics you know you can only really figure that out when you're doing a sort of long form observational thing you and you're

[00:29:50] following the story in real time you know what happened at a meeting was going to determine where the film went next and I needed to be there and I wanted to be there and that's just a bit like

[00:30:00] I like I liked him this just because this little guy's here doesn't want to miss out but also documentary crews are extra like we should all move to America you get paid a lot more um like holy moly like it's expensive it's a higher crew and you know

[00:30:18] that could have been an option but they wouldn't have had the relationships it wouldn't have had the assets it would have been weird it wouldn't have worked so I just went you know went back

[00:30:27] and said well I'd like to go and the way it can work is if I take my mum literally all that is the price of a flight a return flight to Seattle like she'll stay in my room she'll look after

[00:30:38] Eddie like every three hours I made it to do it in the cool sheets and I did this from the beginning like when we were filming Oxford but you know we're doing it in Seattle as well

[00:30:47] and later on other shoots they were like every three hours because the age he was Eddie needed to you know feed that often and I was breastfeeding him I just put in a break

[00:30:56] it just like said feed but it just more like a note to self like thinking about oh how could we possibly block out where do we want to be and when there's these things

[00:31:06] that are happening and then on the first shoot in Oxford the DP that was working with who who wasn't someone to work with before at Shubo who's absolutely fantastic he was like oh that's great so nice when you go to Cauchy and there's all these breaks you're

[00:31:18] drilled in for like snacks yeah that's for you but that said it was a break for everyone like I got 15 minutes 20 minutes every three hours like it's not long but everyone just

[00:31:37] like got to down tools and have a little you know shake it off have a little snack if they wanted to and also like the vibe was just so different we all know shoots have that kind of

[00:31:47] energy to them and but there's something about the reality of this tiny human knocking around somewhere nearby and I'm not saying it would have worked for everyone not everyone has a grandma that they can travel on wherever they go on shoots not everyone would want to earlier this

[00:32:06] year spent quite a lot of time in Kenya and Singapore and I was most definitely not with my children and it was very nice and you know there were different ages and different times and different

[00:32:18] you know sort of ways of working that will work for different people and different projects so it's not that there could ever be a one size fits all solution when it comes to

[00:32:31] being a woman in filmmaking or you know a mother or a father if you know you're the sort of primary care giver in a particular moment there's no one size fits all solution for that but

[00:32:45] I think what there has to be and what there needs to be is just more flexibility to sort of make judgments based on where people are at and asking those questions about the people that you're hiring at the very beginning so that you build a schedule that works

[00:33:05] like imagine if like when you hire your team you just sort of sit down and figure out well what's going to work best around your life you could come up with a schedule that might

[00:33:16] look a bit different to the normal schedule but would still deliver a program at the end of it and if it's a schedule that works better for everyone involved you're far more likely to come in on time

[00:33:27] and on budget with a much happier yeah with a much happier group of people that that sort of can do their best work and again it's this sort of relentless optimism it should be possible

[00:33:40] we can do it like but it just won't happen unless we sort of ask for it and if you're in a lucky position like I was where I didn't feel at risk by asking for it it was still a difficult

[00:33:55] conversation to have in the first instance but I didn't feel like it was going to disadvantage me in some way so I could have it but then in having it it's like okay well of course we'd do that again

[00:34:04] it's falling off a log and I think sometimes a lot of the other sort of ways are working whether it's job sharing or part time and whatever it is taking babies on shoots sharing childcare

[00:34:17] whatever it is I think these are all things that should be possible ways of making television but it's just that absolutely the processes are so ossified that it's hard to move the dial on that

[00:34:37] and when budgets and schedules are getting harder and shorter and people are becoming more risk averse because they need to churn out something really reliable it gets it gets harder to ask people

[00:34:48] to make those changes particularly for feeling vulnerable sorry that I took us on a tangent there but I felt like it was important to have you tell that story to bring it back to the film it

[00:34:57] felt quite apt to be talking about the practicalities of making films whilst also having a family in a podcast in which we're talking about a film which is really about family isn't it it's

[00:35:10] about E's journey to understand more about his father who he is where he came from and you know and how that's informed his his life as well what do you think about this you know my father

[00:35:23] clearly on top of his game with the mathematics and whatnot and I the farthest I got was I flunked out of the easiest ninth grade algebra class I just couldn't grasp it right I just don't I just didn't in here at that gene yeah

[00:35:41] um I thought a lot about that about how stupid I was in math I think I'd have phrased it differently did maybe my father spoke spoke of it no no I'm I mean disappointment I was

[00:35:53] no I think if your father had had the emotional vocabulary he'd have been very very pleased with what you did with your music I think that you know the thing the point that you make about family is it's just

[00:36:12] it's just so compelling it's such a universal thing and I sort of defy anyone to watch it and not like I don't know how you can not like this but in a way for that reason there's just a kind

[00:36:24] of it's shot through with such an accessible humanity and you know also my dad died when I was 19 and I don't think about it that much because I'm dead old now but when I went back and watched it you

[00:36:38] sort of it didn't feel gratuitous for that to be part of the story because it's just it's a people's lived experience and I sort of so I was watching it connecting with the music connecting with

[00:36:50] enjoying the physics he bits connecting with you know the the sort of really rye humor and the charisma of the person who was going on this journey the awkward conversation but equally connecting with the very real human element of it and feeling that that was complete just having

[00:37:06] total license to do that I thought it was a rare example of a science film where you could take the science out of it and it would still be just as compelling a watch I think you that's really true

[00:37:17] and the converse of that is that isn't it remarkable that they could put the science in and not totally fuck it up you could really easily you sort of see that getting whittled and whittled and whittled and eventually sort of scurreled away because there's this great emotional

[00:37:37] journey going on and resurrected tapes that just recall to the stories that he's told and thunderclaps and you know all this great yet you could easily see but it wouldn't it's sort of the brilliance of it is that you could take the science away but actually that you

[00:37:53] know injecting those parts of it make it better because you go on the journey that he is going on and you come away from it feeling like you know whoever in a way that you didn't before and you

[00:38:05] know a bit about physics in the way that you didn't before and you know a bit more about him and you sort of feel like this family and these relationships that didn't exist at the

[00:38:16] beginning of this process of making this film by the end of the film there's this whole new dynamic in the world which is between E and his dad and his knowledge of him and the people around them

[00:38:30] and you as a viewer feel like you're part of it too because you feel like you've connected into that you you were privy to this these moments and hearing his voice and seeing him eat his dad's

[00:38:42] voice and I'd say it's just it's magic and I just I wish there were more films like that so this is the archives of Princeton University itself over 250 years of the institution's documents are here and of course every dissertation that's been produced starting in the 1870s

[00:39:10] including your father's 1957 dissertation which is right down here so this is the opening of the theory and I actually the crazy thing is I actually understand it quantum mechanics is reformulated in a way which eliminates its present dependence

[00:39:29] on the special treatment of observations of a system by an external observer right this is getting weird because I I know what that means no what's happening to me I think one of the standout moments in the film though was

[00:39:48] when he was visiting Princeton and going through the archives and they got out his dad's yeah almost to himself like really quietly and he's like oh my god I understand this I actually understand this and that revelation for him was such an amazing moment and then

[00:40:07] he goes outside and he's kind of talking about it and he's talking about the squirrels and the paradox and all this stuff and it's a real joy isn't it because he under he's you see him

[00:40:17] really going through this journey of understanding it and from where the beginning where he and probably I think the whole crew did not know if he was gonna get it you just can't predict

[00:40:27] that and he did and that was so wonderful in the film to have that moment and go oh I kind of understand now my dad and what he was doing I never thought this was possible that was just

[00:40:35] such a joy without being too reductive do you think the key to what makes this a brilliant film and it is absolutely brilliant and if you haven't seen it you must watch it is the key

[00:40:49] that the journey is entirely genuine yeah absolutely and he's charismatic you want to go on that journey with him you know he's charismatic but I mean it really helps that like central casting in a 101

[00:41:03] you can't I mean I said you know you say well you can't go wrong well you probably could have gone wrong by making that film a different way um but yeah yeah it was intimate and small

[00:41:14] scale yeah he wanted to do it yeah and it was funny and so dark and oh god when he went into the um that was unbelievable dad are you there he's so funny yeah they just let him be funny dad mom can

[00:41:37] you hear me my dad who was a devout atheist of course um his dying wish was to be thrown out in the trash and uh my mom kept his ashes in a filing cabinet in the dining room at our house for a few years

[00:41:58] and then eventually honored his wish and threw him in the trash that's the truth you know some people might have gone no we have to cut this out of the film we can't use it that's too

[00:42:10] much they let and be funny and let him be hit and the whole like you know bold great love it talk about putting your dad's ashes in the bin in the first few minutes of the program

[00:42:25] exactly she kept him in the filing cabinet under what did she file her husband's ashes i mean probably husband's ashes i mean you know what else exactly what else should you call it

[00:42:37] i'm like sold count me in you know and the music was so great and that's the other thing music like what a gift what a gift to have a soundtrack is a character in the film in itself that's

[00:42:51] telling you the story that's bringing it's like the in the meta level of it you know his he's managed to process his story and one particular level to his life so far through

[00:43:00] his music and that and it just they play so beautifully against the scenes and you know the meaning in those songs music i mean is a huge part of the films we do and i think so often it's a it can be a bit of an

[00:43:25] afterthought and we don't get the opportunities to work with composers as much as the films that we make the programs that we make deserve because that you know because the budget implications

[00:43:41] you know or you know you get a certain portion of a library that you're allowed to use and that constrains things to a certain extent well you can't use commercial music which is more

[00:43:49] expensive or has repercussions when the film sells abroad or you can only use it so many times it makes it tricky using commercial music but letting the music play out with the words so you get a moment to physically mentally take in what you've learned what he's learned

[00:44:05] to understand something we don't always have enough time in the film either do we and not have like whole sections without voiceover even if it is an emac it's obviously a natural character within this particular film but i just think in in science films in general it

[00:44:23] could be something that we indulge in and we enjoy a bit more and yeah but practicalities constrain us but i think the last few couple of films i've done have worked with a brilliant

[00:44:34] composer called Jess Danizer and it just makes such a difference because that process of talking about well what what are you where are you trying to lead someone in terms of you know this story

[00:44:44] and how we're feeling and what we're saying and what are the themes that we want to return to and that's all just part of that that kind of creative process that just because you're making

[00:44:53] a science film doesn't mean you have to rinse it off that part of the art form i think you know that the other thing that really and this is to do with the film that stands out for me is this idea

[00:45:07] of like father scientist son musician artist and they're being these being parallel worlds he's been completely different spaces but the fact that i think ultimately the appreciation that he comes to at the end is that his father is this extraordinarily creative genius and i think it's

[00:45:32] a real disservice to the idea of science to think that it's not a creative endeavor we do a big disservice to think that science and scientists aren't incredibly creative people in their own way often the way that science is presented on television and in in the media

[00:45:52] is the kind of the bookkeeping bit of it you know that the stereotypical you don't see the kind of behind the scenes bit which is the thinking and the dreaming up how do you do an experiment

[00:46:05] that no one's ever done before or like how do we think about this differently that's what we did in the film we got to kind of go into the take a peek into this crazy world of quantum mechanics and go

[00:46:15] or maybe i understand a little bit of this although as always Richard Feynman tells you that no one understands but isn't it a wonderful and brilliant sort of privilege of doing the job

[00:46:25] that we do that we get to try and take these things and imagine ways to give people the experience that we had when watching that film i think ultimately that's what i'm always aspiring to

[00:46:36] do is when someone watches something that i've made that they somehow have a kind of experience that i had when i watched you know the film we're talking about that are sort of a learning an emotional journey something that's kind of funny and weird and transformation and hopefully

[00:46:57] unforgettable which leads us rather nicely onto our last question which we ask everyone which is watching it back now and knowing all you know what did this film mean to you then and now

[00:47:15] watching it now i mean it's sort of mad really it's a bit like therapy it's i can i kind of encourage everyone to think about what their film is and then go watch it and

[00:47:26] think about it because it's it's like holding up a mirror to your inculations your aspirations what's what's made you who you are as a filmmaker you know we often don't spend much time thinking

[00:47:43] about those things and it's been a really interesting experience of looking at that and go why do i like it and how does that how has that translated into this funny old job that i fell sideways into

[00:47:59] perfect that's a great what a great place to end thank you for bringing me i really want to talk about the tapes about the tapes oh god the tapes i mean honestly they i know i was the tapes

[00:48:10] because they didn't know they were there i was gonna i wanted to ask you if they knew i know not in the at the in the basement they didn't know if the tapes were there until

[00:48:18] they were on the shoot and they were looking through stuff in the basement they found them they rushed them off to get them put onto cassettes and david the ap listened to them first and was like

[00:48:28] this is amazing we have to you know feature these and to his credit he was really up for listening to them on camera first but i loved when he's there and he's about to listen to

[00:48:41] them he's like i'm not sure i want to do this actually but then he has you know the bravery to press play and listen to them and just the joy of hearing his father like he's never heard

[00:48:52] him speak before really relaxed and playful and then hearing himself it's glory i just yeah it's perfect i have now i have my team of experts um transfer them a little bit nervous yeah i don't

[00:49:10] um still know what to expect here well let's see what we got testing one two three four five well it's been a great evening why don't you lead on after your drink by

[00:49:23] telling us how you that started with weird quantum mechanics well it was because of you and oh peters in one night at the graduate college after a slosh or two or sherry if you might recall

[00:49:34] wow okay that does i remember that is my father's voice i recognize it there well he's talking about like that picture we saw oh we're starting to say some ridiculous things about the implications of quantum mechanics uh-oh and he did keep saying why

[00:49:53] his ultimate conservatism as he put it kept coming through you know not phasing my dad whatsoever you had to put johnny on the straight narrow track end of this tape it was just the best wasn't it what a can like you say a brave thing to do

[00:50:16] i've got audio and videotapes on my dad that i haven't listened to and it's made me think you know wow one day one day yeah just sort of get to know have that it really feels like what you see is a

[00:50:35] genuine and real full circle moment in someone's life a really real and meaningful connection between a human being that's there and a human being that's not and like what a privilege to to see that and to have that shared with you

[00:50:55] louise said that as well louise said it was an absolute privilege to be part of that journey and he'd said to at the beginning don't fuck it up and when he saw the first

[00:51:04] cut he said you haven't fucked it up i mean there's a big responsibility to be tasked with taking something like that of someone's life into the edit and putting it together right a private moment for someone who's who's very private but that makes it all the more

[00:51:20] special and potent because it's like you know that there's a full circle moment with his father there's a full circle moment with himself as a child i mean it's just pure magic he was dreaming

[00:51:32] these things up when they when he actually did it and uh and you know just talking to all these people that knew him and it's interesting it feels like he's around now you know more than

[00:51:43] i've ever felt that was too good i was like good i mean i mean it's just gonna sound like we put that in in sound effects you know it's too fucking perfect and you definitely couldn't make up the

[00:52:03] thunder no and it wasn't made up at all they were just all like what is going on like he was holding an umbrella that was louise's umbrella that she uses to keep her camera dry and she was like

[00:52:17] i really hope my camera my dsr it's a dsr 500 one of these big old you know cameras like she's like i just have a little lens cloth over it i think she doesn't die and i didn't yeah so that was all

[00:52:31] yeah i mean it's just you know all these things are cues to make you think stuff but my goodness if you're spiritually inclined you'd be finding all manner of meaning in that it's perfect in

[00:52:44] lots of ways i don't i don't think you could make it better i know what you mean about the tapes though because i had some tapes in my attic of my my mum used to record tapes when my brother and i were

[00:52:57] born and were little to send to her parents and sister who lived up in yorkshire and so i like they were just stuck up in the attic and now my mum's ill we don't really hear her

[00:53:07] voice anymore and i haven't heard my grandparents or auntie's voice in years and so we found them and i yeah played them and have cleaned up the sound and it's amazing to hear all their voices

[00:53:21] again it's an absolute joy and even if they're talking about you know just the everyday stuff and it but it's funny they're funny and you're just like oh yes this is what yeah this is what

[00:53:31] they were like the we should in the art of you know making the films that we do wherever it's possible and maybe this isn't everyone's encouragement certainly mine they're just like really leaning into the humanity of the scientists the subjects in our films because i think they have

[00:53:55] and often feel like they're there to tell you facts and i think it's almost always better if they're telling you facts whilst equally having the opportunity to tell you something about themselves

[00:54:10] and whether that's the way in which you shoot it all the things that you find out about them around the fact that they're there just to you know tell you a bit of special factual information just think it makes all of those things more accessible and memorable

[00:54:28] because you know science is done by people and people are what we've evolved to engage with and want to connect with so i think we do a great service to science and storytelling

[00:54:42] when we present you know whether it's someone like e or the the scientists that we're interviewing as humans first as family members first as people first and as scientists next well thank you for bringing in cat yeah thank you very much brilliant film to watch

[00:54:58] no it's a real joy i could whitch on endlessly but you know that follow who moved the tortoise on x at tortoise pod or email us at whomovethetortis at gmail.com i like birds